Pakistan needs to change its attitude on many issues, especially terrorism: Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar

India on Wednesday made it clear that removal of hurdles on various issues is necessary for normalising relations with Pakistan. Delivering the keynote address on the second day of the Raisina Dialogue here, the foreign secretary, S Jaishankar, while replying to questions, said Pakistan needs to change its attitude on many issues, especially terrorism, which needs to be addressed and crushed.

He suggested that action against terror by Pakistan was a greater priority for it than resumption of a bilateral dialogue in the aftermath of the Pathankot attack, which led to postponement of the foreign secretary-level talks.
"In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious," he said.

The remarks came on a day, when in the fourth attack since 2007, heavily-armed terrorists, including suicide bombers, struck the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city on Wednesday, killing nine persons -- including an Afghan security personnel -- and causing damage to the chancery.

In a related development, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has sent Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking details of four Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who had carried out the attack. Ahead of the visit of Pakistani Special Investigating Team, likely to take place in the last week of this month, the NIA sent the Letters Rogatory, a legal document sent through the special court asking details about the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of carrying out the strike at the airbase of the Indian Air Force on the intervening night of January 1 and 2.

The numbers are believed to be in the names of people connected with JeM, including Mullah Dadullah and Kashif Jaan. The numbers shared belong to the Pakistani telecom operators like Mobilink, Warid and Telenor. The NIA has also sought details and picture of sons of Khayam Baber, whose son was a part of the suicide squad that carried out the attack. Kashif Jaan, one of the key handlers of the attackers, had accompanied the terrorists till the border and returned to supervise the operations, the sources said. The bodies of four terrorists have been preserved. Out of the four, two of them have been identified as Nasir and Salim.

Nasir was the one who had called his mother, Baber, in Bhawalpur from the phone snatched from jeweller friend of superintendent of police of Punjab Salwinder Singh.

Don't give non-state groups veto power: Aziz
Washington: Pakistan is "anxiously waiting" for the "disrupted" Indo-Pak foreign secretary-level talks to resume, a top aide of Pakistani prime minister has said while appealing to India not to give non-state actors "a veto" over bilateral ties.

Sartaj Aziz, the foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said the Pathankot terror attack disrupted the FS-level talks, which he said were crucial to prepare the ground to deal with more difficult issues.

"As our policy of peaceful neighbourhood, we have reached out to India. We are anxiously waiting for the dialogue to be resumed. The Pathankot incident disrupted the process of the two foreign secretaries' meetings," Aziz said.